[mythtv-users] RedHat vs Ubuntu

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 10:13 AM Ken Smith via mythtv-users
<mythtv-users at mythtv.org> wrote:

> With the debacle over Centos 8 last year

The only debacle is for those that did not understand
getting early access to updates through CentOS Stream
and were afraid that they might install those updates
early (which of course, was their choice to install or
not install).  I believe the lead of Rocky Linux has
said they now understand the purpose of Stream a
lot better, and see how it can be useful for some,
if not all, use cases for CentOS.  Individual users,
of course, would have gotten those same stream
updates in the next EL point release anyway,
although they would have been nicely versioned rather
than streamed.  With RH maintaining ABI stability in
an EL version for software, updates nearly never break
MythTV in any case (and dnf downgrade is always
available in the case some update does break an
app, because nearly never does not mean never
never).

For those who want true RHEL8, one can obtain a
free (to use) license for a small number of systems
directly from RedHat even for "production" work
now (previously it was limited to development, but
RH announced the change at the beginning of the
year).

> I have been attempting to set
> up my latest incarnation of MythTV on AlmaLinux, with is a Redhat 8
> clone.

No, it is not, really.  Rocky is closer.  Alma has decided to add in
"extras" and with it's choices has made building/using software
such as MythTV more difficult as you have learned.  Perhaps
Alma will clean up its act at some point, but for now, I would
stay away from Alma.  For my occasional test mock builds, I
can build MythTV (fixes/31 and master) for Fedora, EL7, EL8,
Stream8, Rocky, but not Alma (mock cannot install all the
required packages due to conflicts/breakage in the Alma
repository itself, which is just unacceptable dependency
breakage on Alma's part).

> For MythTV > v28 is a RedHat/RPMFusion a viable way forward?

>From random comments, It would appear that for the
subset of MythTV devs that choose to use a RH variant
(those building from source and running master) Fedora
may be the choice.

> Is anyone else currently using a RedHat derived system?

I use Fedora, which is not so much as derived, but
upstream, but I consider it part of the overall larger
RH family.  It just works, and so do system updates
(I tend to update my Fedora based MythTV systems
even before the official GA date).  Note, as suggested
above, I build my own packages because I wish to
run the master branch, and a new Fedora version
may (often does) require a newer build because
of library ABI changes.  RPMFusion does that
for you for the stable (fixes/31) branch on Fedora.

One can go to the MythTV smolt report which shows
others do use EL based systems, although since smolt
is opt-in, and many do not opt-in, the numbers are
only suggestive.

> As I see it there are these options
>
> - Somehow get the RPMFusion rpm sorted out. Not having much luck with that.

Switch to a free RHEL license, CentOS Stream, or Rocky
if you want to stay on a EL platform (I have not tested
RPMFusion on Rocky, but it is seems far more likely to
just work).

> - Find an alternative repository with a current rpm build. I do see
> MythTV 0.27 for Fedora 19 on ATRPM's but Fedora 19 went EoL in 2015.

As I recall, ATRPMS is (long) dead.

> - Build from source on AlmaLinux.

Well, if you really want to stay with Alma, but I
would look elsewhere.

> - Drop RedHat and switch to Ubuntu.
>
> I rather suspect the last option is the only real way forward.

Ubuntu is the most popular path according to the
smolt data for the average person.  And it just
works thanks to others making sure builds keep
working.